2025-11-27

etc

• How a Government Think Tank Trained The First Generation of US Software Developers

  RAND’s radar operator performance studies made it an obvious candidate for programming the SAGE system. Not only was RAND already working on the problem of processing radar station data, but to do so it had already hired a substantial fraction of the programming talent in the US. In 1955 RAND employed 25 programmers, at a time when there were only an estimated 1200 programmers in the entire country, only 200 of which were creating programs of substantial complexity. In 1955 RAND agreed to take on the task of programming for the SAGE system, and by the end of the year 75 people at RAND’s System Development Division were working on SAGE.

Horseshit

• After nearly 100 years, scientists may have detected dark matter

  • Study claims to provide first direct evidence of dark matter

• Robinhood, Susquehanna to Launch Exchange to Expand Prediction Markets Offerings

  • Robinhood, Susquehanna Escalate Prediction-Market Arms Race

• Software Development has a 996 Problem

• Long-sought solution to 'Kryptos' sculpture sells for almost $1M

• To Explore Violence Against Women, She Drugs Herself Onstage

• Many genes associated with dog behavior influence human personalities, too

• The collapse of Maya civilization: Drought doesn't explain everything

Epstein

• How the Elite Behave When No One Is Watching: Inside the Epstein Emails

celebrity gossip

• Mick Jagger. Rolling Stone. Cultural icon. And cricket streaming pioneer

Obit

• Burt Meyer, Inventor of Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots and Other Hit Toys, Dies at 99

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• Seeing the rich makes people favour redistribution, but also increases division

Musk

• Dutch public broadcaster NOS quits X over disinformation

  "The amount of hateful responses and disinformation on X is large and unrestricted. Also under our own messages, making us unintentionally help spread them."

• My Car Is Becoming a Brick

• Elon Musk Said Grok's Roasts Would Be 'Epic' – So I Tried It on My Coworkers

• Crews Claim Boring Company Failed to Pay Workers and Snubbed OSHA Concerns

• The Tesla Model Y Just Scored the Worst Reliability Rating in a Decade

• Tesla's European sales tumble nearly 50% in October

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• Tradwives are fighting the cultural stigma that still remains around being a homemaker. That makes them damn good feminists.

• Mystical beliefs predict a meaningful life even without organized religion

• Transgender athlete 'was dishonest' says strongest woman

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• A Math Horror Show at UC San Diego

• H1-B visas: Universities have sold a whole generation a lie

  If Trump, like many Democrats, is seeking a resurgent America, the critical challenge will lie not in financial manipulation, computer games, or supervising AI as it analyses everything in minute details. The future is in developing and nurturing the skilled hands needed to resist and surpass the United States’ competitors.

• One of the most influential social psychology studies ever – was it all a lie?

• Academic assassinations are a threat to global science

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• I Read the Terms of Service for My Smart TV and Now I Sleep with One Eye Open

  The remote control is a spy. The TV itself is a spy. My living room is now a bugged embassy in a low-budget espionage thriller. Last night, my wife and I had a whispered argument about whether pineapple belongs on pizza. This morning, my social media feed was a wall of ads for Hawaiian-themed frozen pizzas. Coincidence? I THINK NOT. I now communicate sensitive information via a series of intricate hand gestures and hastily scribbled notes on an Etch A Sketch. The TV can't read my frantic scribbling. I hope.

• Porn Giant Calls for Device-Based Digital ID

• CISA warns spyware crews are breaking into Signal and WhatsApp accounts

• Modder who put Thomas the Tank Engine into Skyrim flips the bird at lawyers

• Lawsuit alleges social media giants buried research on teen mental health harms

• Huawei and Chinese Surveillance

• KDE Plasma 6.8 Will Go Wayland-Exclusive in Dropping X11 Session Support

  • KDE Plasma 6.8 will be Wayland-only

• Please stop wasting money on expensive SSDs

  First, just because, a 1TB SATA SSD. I'm finding models in the $60 to $85 range, and they're all around 550MB/s. Thanks, I'll pass. Next, a 1TB PCIe Gen 3 M.2 NVMe SSD costs around $75, but the speed is significantly higher, ranging from 3,200MB/s to 3,600MB/s. You'll often spend about the same on a 1TB PCIe 4.0 drive, although the faster options tend to inch closer to $100. If your motherboard can support it, you're much better off buying a PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD, as you're getting roughly double the peak sequential speed of PCIe 3.0 at a similar price.

  The jump from an HDD to any SSD is mind-blowing. The jump from a SATA SSD to an NVMe drive is less incredible, but still significant. But from one NVMe SSD to the next, you won't see much of a difference.

• iPhone Users Can Now AirDrop Files to Android Devices

  • The EU made Apple adopt new Wi-Fi standards, and now Android can support AirDrop

• DRAM prices are spiking, but I don't trust the industry's why

• Cloudflare outage should not have happened

• Courting controversy for marketing? A Creepy Horse Game Was Banned from Steam and No One's Sure Why

  The studio called this explanation “deliberately vague and unfounded” and claimed that Horses does not contain any content that would fall into this so-called “grey area.” However, it did admit that initially a scenario in the game did involve a young kid riding on the shoulders of a naked woman in a mask, as horses in the game are depicted as naked people, but that scene has since been changed to remove the child.

• How 'Stranger Things' Defined the Era of the Algorithm

• Crocs get the Xbox treatment with sole-crushing price of $80

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• memories of .us

  RFC 1480 is a very interesting read. It makes passing references to so many facets of DNS history that could easily be their own articles. It also defines a strict, geography-based hierarchy for the .us domain that is a completely different universe from the one in which we now live. For example, we learned above that, in 1993, only four-year institutions were being placed under .edu. What about the community colleges? Well, RFC 1480 has an answer. Central New Mexico Community College would, of course, fall under cnm.cc.nm.us. Well, actually, in 1993 it was called the Technical-Vocational Institute, so it would have been tvi.tec.nm.us. That's right, the RFC describes both "cc" for community colleges and "tec" for technical institutes.

  You look at Reddit these days and see all these usernames that are two random words and four random numbers, and you see that Postel and Cooper were right. Flat namespaces create a problem, names must either be complex or long, and people don't like it either. What I think they got wrong, at a usability level, is that deep hierarchies still create names that are complex and long. It's a kind of complexity that computer scientists are more comfortable with, but that's little reassurance when you're staring down the barrel of "bridger.pps.k12.or.us".

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• Prosecutor Used Flawed A.I. To Keep a Man in Jail, His Lawyers Say

• CrowdStrike Researchers Identify Hidden Vulnerabilities in AI-Coded Software

• AI Slop Recipes Are Taking over the Internet – and Thanksgiving Dinner

• Why AI Safety Won't Make America Lose the Race with China

• OpenAI needs to raise $207B by 2030 so it can continue to lose money

• Nvidia says its GPUs are a 'generation ahead' of Google's AI chips

• TSMC, the world's leading manufacturer of high-end chips, says it can meet one third of the demand from AI buildouts.

• Creepy AI Toys

• The Most Likely AI Apocalypse

• A National Mission to Accelerate Science Through Artificial Intelligence

• Indie game developers have a new sales pitch: being 'AI free'

• Wakayama senior uses AI to identify wild mushrooms, gets poisoned shortly after

• Police Trial AI Chatbot for Non-Emergency Calls

• Why So Much Is Riding on the Data Center Boom

• Why Fears of a Trillion-Dollar AI Bubble Are Growing

• MIT study finds AI can replace 11.7% of U.S. workforce

• Fears About A.I. Prompt Talks of Super PACs to Rein in the Industry

• More than half of new articles on the internet are being written by AI

• 'Sovereign AI' Takes Off as Countries Seek to Avoid Overreliance on Superpowers

• OpenAI blames suicide on 'misuse' of its technology

  • OpenAI says dead teen violated TOS when he used ChatGPT to plan suicide

• Fox News hires Palantir to build AI newsroom tools

• Investors expect AI use to soar. That's not happening

• Sam Altman's Business Buddies Are Getting Burned

• OpenAI Loses Key Discovery Battle as It Cedes Ground to Authors in AI Lawsuits

• Warning: The Fed Can't Rescue AI

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• After 5 years on Mars, NASA's Perseverance may have found its first meteorite

• NASA Rover Makes a 'Shocking' Discovery: Lightning on Mars

• Voyager 1 Is About to Reach One Light-Day from Earth

• Boeing's Next Starliner Flight Will Only Be Allowed to Carry Cargo

Crypto con games

• Hamas attack victims sue Binance for allowing payments to militant group

  • Binance accused of aiding terrorists in new lawsuit

• Klarna to launch dollar-backed stablecoin as race in digital payments heats up

• Why Is Crypto Crashing?

• Crypto hoarders dump tokens as shares tumble

• S&P cuts Tether stablecoin rating to 'weak' on disclosure gaps

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Amazon faces FAA probe after delivery drone snaps internet cable in Texas

  • FAA probes Amazon after delivery drone snaps internet cable in Texas

• SoftBank's 40% Slide from Peak Shows Worry over Giant OpenAI Bet

• How a US home insurance fix is becoming a problem

• HP to sack up to 6000 staff under AI adoption plan, fresh round of cost-cutting

  • HP plans to save millions by laying off thousands, ramping up AI use

• Traders Are Flooding Markets with Risky Bets. Robinhood's CEO Is Their Cult Hero

• Thanksgiving gas prices fall to lowest levels since pandemic, with nearly 30 states below $3 a gallon.

• Nvidia Plays Down Google Chip Threat Concerns

  • Nvidia Shares Fall on Signs Google Gaining Upper Hand in AI

• Euro zone banks should prepare for risk of dollar squeeze

• Nouriel Roubini is optimistic about the economy

• Why millennials feel hopeless about the economy

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Senate Committee to Challenge Auto-Safety Mandates That Hurt ‘Affordability.’

  Senate Republicans in January plan to criticize requirements for safety technology, such as automatic emergency braking and alarms to remind drivers that a child is in the back seat, arguing they are ineffective and will unnecessarily drive up the cost of cars, according to people familiar with the situation. They aim to head off future requirements touted by safety advocates and argue instead for advancing autonomous vehicle technology.

  • "Let the market find out what people want" is apparently still not an option.

Trump

• Trump signs executive order launching Genesis Mission AI project

Left Angst

• Foreign tourists to pay extra fee to visit US national parks

  • US triples national park fee for non-residents, amid 'new' fee for Americans

• I Went to an Anti-Vaccine Conference. Medicine Is in Trouble

• Doctor Critical of Vaccines Appointed as CDC's Second in Command

• Roblox is a problem — but it’s a symptom of something worse

  What is the role of tech journalism in a world where CEOs no longer feel shame? Platforms do whatever the president of the United States tells them to do, and very little else. Shame, that once-great regulator of social norms and executive behavior, has all but disappeared from public life. In its place is denial, defiance, and the noxious vice signaling of the investor class. I'm still reckoning with what it means to do journalism in a world where the truth can barely hold anyone's attention — much less hold a platform accountable, in any real sense of that word. I'm rethinking how to cover tech policy at a time when it is being made by whim. I'm noticing the degree to which platforms wish to be judged only by their stated intentions, and almost never on the outcomes of anyone who uses them.

• Here's Why a Hennepin County Judge Overturned a $7.2M Medicaid Fraud Conviction

• World-famous brewing institution leaving U.S. for Canada

  Since 1872, the famed Siebel Institute of Technology has taught generations of beer brewers the fine art and science of the craft in Chicago. But in a statement on social media, the school says it has chosen to relocate to Canada, pointing to policies enacted under the Trump administration for its decision.

• A Stunning Leak Just Shed New Light on How Cozy the Trump Admin Really Is With Russia

• Kilowatts or connections? Trump's favored nuclear startups soar to riches

• Is Queens the new political bellwether of America?

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• Two National Guard members in critical condition after shooting near White House, AP source says

  Two National Guard members were shot Wednesday near the White House and are in critical condition, according to a law enforcement official not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and who spoke to AP on condition of anonymity. A suspect who was in custody also was shot and has injuries that are not believed to be life-threatening, the source said.

  • The gunman accused of shooting two National Guard members blocks from the White House the day before Thanksgiving is 29-year-old Afghan national Rahmanullah Lakanwal, three law enforcement sources confirmed.

  • Suspect in custody after 2 National Guardsmen killed in Washington, D.C.

  • Everything we know about DC shooter who attacked two National Guardsmen

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• U.S. Nuclear Arms Chief Warns Against Leaks of Secret Information

• F-35 beat Gripen fighter jet 'by a mile' in 2021 Defence Department competition

• Navy Cuts Constellation-Class Frigate Program Short as Shipbuilding Delays Mount

World

• Get us off Microsoft! Lawmakers press EU Parliament to change in-house IT

• Council reaches position on Chat Control

  • Weakened EU 'Chat Control' moves forward with voluntary scanning

  • EU approves Chat Control policy

• Tokyo Overtaken as World's Biggest City

• Transit violence rising across Canada – in some cities, by nearly 300%

• Belgium grinds to a halt in three-day general strike against austerity measures

• Teens launch High Court challenge to Australia's social media ban

• EU court says same-sex marriages should be recognised throughout bloc

• Two London councils enact emergency plans after being hit by cyber-attack

• Protection of dogs and cats: deal on EU rules to stop abuse

• Canadian Court: OVHcloud from France must hand over user data

• India approves $816M rare earth permanent magnets manufacturing program

• European lawmakers seek EU-wide minimum age to access AI chatbots, social media

• Italian parliament unanimously votes to make femicide a crime

• Poland picks Sweden's Saab to supply it with three submarines (A26 Blekinge)

• Is France standing up for encryption and privacy?

• UK EV owners to face pay-per-mile tax

Israel

• Pope Francis' popemobile transformed into mobile clinic for Gaza children

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Putin Advisers Discuss Plans for Dealing with Trump: Transcript

• Russia's Soyuz 5 will soon come alive. But will anyone want to fly on it?

China

• Skyscrapers engulfed in flames after fire spreads on bamboo scaffolding

  At least four people have died after fire ripped through bamboo scaffolding on high-rise buildings in Hong Kong’s Tai Po district. Residents are still feared to be trapped inside their homes on the Wang Fuk Court housing estate, with red plumes of smoke reaching into the sky from multiple skyscrapers as night fell.

  • At least 36 killed in Hong Kong fire with 279 still missing, authorities say

  • 36 Dead and others trapped as fire continues to burn through Hong Kong high-rise

  • What we know about the Hong Kong apartment fires

• Can China-Japan Relations Be Saved?

• Taiwan's president: I will boost defense spending to protect our democracy

• Chinese Regulators May Kill Retractable Car Door Handles

• China battery maker CATL to train Spanish workers for battery plant

• Chinese researchers simulate jamming Starlink in Taiwan conflict

• Chinese Pharma Is on the Cusp of Going Global

Health / Medicine

• US slashes 36% off Medicare spending on 15 high-priced medicines

• Medicare Negotiates 71% Discount on Novo's Ozempic, Wegovy

• There may not be a safe off-ramp for some taking GLP-1 drugs, study suggests

• They relied on marijuana to get through the day. But then days felt impossible without it.

• ADHD diagnoses are growing. What's going on?

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• New York City's Next Super Storm

• 'Once in 300 years' rain hits Thai city as floods ravage South East Asia

• Climate activist Greta Thunberg banned from Venice after Grand Canal dyed green

• Motorist in North Carolina tells 911: ‘I just had a bald eagle drop a cat through my windshield’

• The long-overlooked insects, Hoverflies, that could save our crops

• The Conservation Success That Saved Wild Turkeys Across the Country

• One mile on bike is a 42¢ economic gain to society, a mile driving is a 20¢ loss

• Global carbon emissions will soon flatten or decline

• Solar's growth in US almost enough to offset rising energy use

• A woman on a mission to photograph every species of hummingbird